The mercenaries and the sailors weren’t necessarily on the same side. The mercenaries were going to be under the strict employ of the Houses, loaned over by a company operating in the Kingdom of Kittari. The ships, meanwhile, were operated by a private charter originally managed by one of the late Lastifer’s associates. In the wake of Lastifer’s death, and for the sake of being left alone, the charter had offered some of its services to the Houses of Wiz and Bowyer at a discount.
On this occasion, these ships, the Hermitage and the Pinebristle, were just supposed to pick up some men and cargo from the east and drop them off here. The value of the cargo had been nothing to scoff at, so they, the charter’s most heavily armed ships, were assigned to this transaction.
However, they had been at sea for months just up until now. Having arrived a few days ago, the acting head of the merchant squadron — the captain of the Hermitage — was distraught over how the change in management would be handled.
The mercenaries, on the other hand, didn’t really care. They were supposed to scatter into three companies anyway, one for each of the Three Houses — and then there were Two. They each just had to sign new contracts, in the end. The fact that the Houses were in conflict with the Order hadn’t fazed them, either. Heh, really, the Order could go to hell.
In either case, the captain of the Hermitage and the mercenaries — they didn’t care much about each other at all. They treated each other like strangers on a train.
The crew of the Hermitage took their places around the swivel guns mounted outboard of the top deck. Most of them wielded muskets and rifles, hiding behind heavy wooden shields erected against the railing, but a select few manned the swivel guns themselves, two for each gun. Though called “guns,” they were real cannons; each measured fingertip to fingertip with one’s arms spread out, firing one-inch solid iron shot, more than enough to pierce shields and gun ports.
The mercenaries on the top deck of the Pinebristle, still reeling from the confusion of having part of the floor explode and their comrades scream and writhe, wanting to die, saw all this movement from the Hermitage. It appeared as if they were being treated as enemies, and as the anti-boarding guns of the Hermitage swiveled their way, flanked by ranks of riflemen, they shouted and waved their arms, panicking and begging them not to shoot.
The captain ignored them and gave the order. It’s not like they were aiming for the top deck, anyway. “Let 'em have it!”
The swivel guns fired with window-breaking percussion. Gunners removed the breech cups and loaded in new ones, fresh with new flare-sand, firing again.
Fifteen swivel guns were going off in scattered order, aiming for the Pinebristle’s gun ports where the ship’s armor was thinnest.
The mercenaries’ commanders were debating in a tent on the wharf when this happened. They stopped, going dead silent in confusion when they heard the rapping fire of the swivel guns.
A messenger burst in through the tent. “The Hermitage is firing on the Pinebristle!”
The commanders burst out of the tent, already insulting the captain in their minds. The idiot was going to get their men killed! They sent some of their fastest men to climb up the Hermitage’s cargo nets in a hurry to deliver a simple message: “Stop firing!”
The mercenaries on the top deck of the Pinebristle were scattering, taking cover behind whatever, and a handful had already thrown themselves overboard. All this, but none of them were actually being injured by the Hermitage’s limited fire. They wouldn’t be convinced by this, however, not when there were still victims of Jon’s maneuver screaming to die amidst it all, splendidly fulfilling the atmosphere of one’s comrades dying all around them, falling to massed anti-infantry fire.
One deck below the manufactured chaos was a very real one. Large caliber shots punched through gun ports, sending splinters bouncing off the walls and floor. Some shots directly hit the cannons behind the gun ports themselves, making them ring off like gongs.
Amidst all of this, Jon and the remaining assassins kept their heads down — but they couldn’t stay like this for too long. Once again, something had to change, or else the enemy would eventually reorganize and take them out for sure this time.
The only thing he could think to do was to finally execute their original plan and blow up the enemy ship’s moorings. However, such a thing would require them to peek through gun ports — the very same ones being peppered with large-caliber shot at the moment — before taking their time to properly aim and fire.
Impossible, really.
It was a good thing that this world was filled with miracles.
This time’s miracle was an old guy, who’d been watching this whole situation unfold from the window of a certain brothel perched on a hill overlooking the harbor. Damian couldn’t believe what he was seeing through the spyglass. Was Jon even still alive? When most people see a ship get raked by enough firepower to fend off a knight battalion, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect most people in it to be dead.
[Make yourself useful.]
He jerked back from the spyglass. The consternation induced by getting the attention of a goddess made knots in his stomach.
“W-what is it?” he asked aloud.
[Eliminate the captain standing on the quarterdeck of the firing ship.]
Oh, is that all? Well, easy enough. He dimmed the lamp beside him and opened the window, letting the breeze and the burning smell of the harbor into the room.
He scoped out the harbor once again, looking for any particularly decorative hats standing around and looking all-important. The flashes of cannon and gunfire was making it difficult for his eyes to adjust properly, but he did end up finding a man with a fluffy feather on his head.
Really, targets who announced themselves so boldly were his favorite.
Foreboding particles of darkness gathered around his hands, solidifying into the shape and function of a crossbow. The brothel was about two kilometers downwind from the harbor — severe conditions for any archer, but not a problem for him.
He took a bolt from a kit strapped around his leg. Finely crafted by the city’s best fletcher, it was still just an ordinary bolt.
It flew from his hand, seating itself in the nock of the shadowy mana crossbow. He aimed…well, he pointed in the general direction of the harbor. Anyone who saw him might have thought, “Wow, what a carefree guy,” as he loosed the bolt into the darkness.
Deep in his mind, however, he focused on the image of the captain, unerringly maintaining the intent to stick him right in the head.
The moment he broke concentration was the moment the bolt would just flop from the air. With the harbor 2000 meters away, and his bolt fighting against the incoming wind, soaring in a high arc into the sky, cruising for a while before finally coming down, he would need to maintain this concentration for a full minute.
His mind was full of emptiness. It was dark, just like the crossbow dissipating from his hands. He didn’t even know it was gone now. He didn’t know what world there was outside.
Like a love struck youth, he obsessed over the thought of killing the captain with a falling bolt through the top of the head. It would be like a goddess decided to blow a flower with petals made of bolts, and one of them just happened to land on his hand, because screw him in particular. Wow, that would be hilarious. I wonder if Lady Ravena had ever done that before —
Whoops, he almost broke concentration there.
***
The bolt sailed over the vast expanse of wild grass between the brothel and the sea. The magic of a Skill pushed it onward, but simple magic was not enough.
To reach its target in the face of adverse crosswinds and the ultimate threat of failure ... the bolt had to fly under the power of its own philosophy.
It was not concerned about where it was, but only about where it wasn’t. It must travel such a ludicrous distance, you see, beyond the expectations placed on any normal bolt. Just like how it was a speck in the sky, its target also seemed like a speck — a dream — that it, itself, cannot even see, leading it to doubt whether its target even existed at all.
It was a plain, ordinary bolt, but for a plain, ordinary bolt, crafted from common birch trees, left to wither and dry for years — unfulfilled and at a loss for its purpose — to suddenly find itself in the midst of the mayhem that it had always wished for, this was a situation that summoned every fear and uncertainty: about the qualities of its fletching, the springiness of its shaft, and the sharpness of its warhead.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Every lash of the wind — every speck and particle of dust — colliding against its head, its body, and its tail, interrupted its flight and confidence. What should have been a straight path had become a crooked one, and it spins and warbles, slowing down, suddenly becoming unsure of whether it would even penetrate its target, assuming it would even reach it at all.
The power of the bolt, however, laid not in the circumstances of its birth — not in the durability of its construction, the deadliness of its tip, nor even the stability of its flight — but in its ability to make small, incremental changes in every waking second of its travel. It appreciated the path it had left behind, but also ignored it; it carried only a modicum of a memory of the past, only enough to remember its lessons, discarding everything else that would slow it down.
Pulling it forward was gratitude for a simple fact: that it did not have to wonder about “what could have been,” for it was already where it was supposed to be. The unending struggle of its current path paled in comparison to the suffering of the lethargy of simply being stored and left to rot away. Every crosswind, every trial and tribulation set before it was evidence that it had left behind that hell, and even failure here was better than the safety and security of simply existing in the same way every day.
It coasted along, expending as little energy as it could, drifting with the wind whenever it needed to; it was not desperate to reach its goal; it was not desperate to succeed. It was already where it needed to be.
Whether it would reach its target was its sole responsibility; whether the target would be dead or alive when it did…was the target’s responsibility. It did not, anymore, worry to compare its armor penetration against the target’s armor protection, for these things were decided by entities above itself and beyond its control.
To fly was the bolt’s sole mission.
***
At this moment, to kill was Jon’s sole intent. The Heritage’s gunners couldn’t actually see into the deck, which meant that they couldn’t aim their fire right at him.
If he made it through this, then that was scarcely a problem at all. If he got hit…well, it wouldn’t be his problem anymore.
With sparse hope, he got up on all fours and ran for the next loaded cannon.
For some reason, there was a lull in the gunfire at that exact moment. That only made him rush faster, as it could resume at any moment. He took hold of a trigger wire and coursed mana into it.
He didn’t even open the gun port, catching the Heritage by surprise as a bridge of fire was formed between themselves and the Pinebristle. Grapefire turned the space between them — and the pier below — into a scorching deathscape.
For all intents and purposes, the moment he fired the first cannon should have been the moment that the Heritage’s gunners zeroed in on him and ripped him to shreds.
At this point, several miracles converged into one to create the single deadliest day for Jon’s enemies.
Emboldened by Jon’s do-and/or-die attitude, the two remaining assassins with him rushed to the other cannons, randomly distributing themselves and firing them through the closed gun ports, sowing even more confusion among their enemies.
Beforehand, a messenger had reached the captain of the Hermitage. The mercenaries had managed to prepare an impromptu bridge to get across the damaged section of the pier, and now it was only a matter of getting the Hermitage to cease fire to allow the renewed assault to proceed without friendly fire.
The captain reluctantly agreed, giving the order to cease fire. The mercenaries were rushing up the pier to get to the Pinebristle’s gang planks, likely just as impatient as he was to retake control of the ship; much of their supplies were still on-board, not to mention the slaves who would end up sold, the profit turned into salary for the mercenaries.
The moment when the swivel guns stopped firing was the moment Damian’s bolt reached him. It sank into his head from straight above. He tipped over, very much dead, shocking the messenger and the captain’s immediate subordinates.
It was at that moment that Jon began his volley. Grapefire at such a close range ended up getting through some opened gun ports, killing some of the crew in the middle deck. Much of the grapefire splattered against the hull of the Heritage, instead, but that just meant the projectiles flew up and down and every way around — up in the air in full view of the top deck, and down at the pier, in the faces of the mercenaries’ renewed assault. (+39 Kills)
The crew of the Heritage was unprepared for this. The captain hadn’t ordered the cannons loaded, leaving them only able to defend themselves with swivel guns. The remaining gunners could only guess where the next salvo would come from, however, as the assassins were also hard at work firing the deadly fruits of their fallen comrade’s labor.
Taking advantage of the chaos, Jon rushed to the very rear of the ship where the heavy cannons were located, firing a few more cannons (+19 Kills) as he passed by (+22 Kills).
Reaching a heavy cannon, he busted open the gun port, letting in a lot of smoke. Visibility was shit, but that worked both for and against him. Amidst the mayhem of cannons being fired at practically point-blank range and people dying left and right, no one should have noticed a single gun port being opened.
Slightly behind the opposing ship was a large capstan, around which a thick chain was wrapped, a chain which led up to the rear of the opposing ship, thus anchoring it to the wharf. There were also supposed to be various ropes keeping the ship tied to the pier, but those were quickly burning up from all the grapefire being used.
The ropes tying the Pinebristle to the pier were also burning, causing its fore to lurch and turn away from the pier — pivoting the heavy cannon’s aim towards the Heritage’s capstan.
Did Jon plan this? No. He was satisfied with knowing he had a clear view of the capstan. He didn’t care which goddess blessed him for this moment, and really, Ravena didn’t have a hand in this particular situation. Lumina didn’t care about this sort of stuff either. This was 100% luck.
It wasn’t as if it was aimed directly at the capstan, anyway. Jon labored to turn the hand cranks under the cannon, adjusting its aim and fighting against the constant, unpredictable lurching of the ship. It was a large enough ship not to bob around too much, but this situation was akin to sniping a moving target from a helicopter.
It wasn’t something impossible, but if he missed, he missed.
All the while, the crew of the Hermitage fell into chaos. After the captain was killed, his immediate subordinates were also killed in the surprise barrage from the Pinebristle, shattering whatever remained of the chain of command. Many of the crew sincerely believed they were about to die and threw themselves off the side of the ship.
With the Hermitage under heavy fire and rendered useless, the mercenary commanders decided to take action. As if to mock them, however, even their camp on the wharf began exploding! What seemed to be mortar shells were landing all around them, and the cries of their men reached their ears.
Only one enemy crossed their minds: the Order.
Those weren’t mortars, however, but grenades, ones being fired from nearby, and that wasn’t the Order — those knights in shining armor were still a little far away. Ravena had called upon Alyssa Rainsworth to limp her way here and lay waste to the mercenary camp.
Other than the fact that walking was a pain, she was more than happy to do so. In fact, this was the kind of job that was more up her alley: the mass disposal of low-leveled trash. Her Guntalker Skill only lent her overwhelming power against enemies who only relied on numbers — exactly this kind of situation. She might be able to go toe-to-toe with powerful individuals like Kinesia, but she didn’t really have any war-winning advantage in those situations.
At least she was being served an easy job this time, and she was happy enough with it.
—I’m helping Jon!
She was so happy, in fact, that she made Amani tag along, claiming it to be entirely necessary as part of Amani’s apprenticeship in the Theater. This was a blatant lie; Alyssa’s guns didn’t reload themselves.
Just when it looked like the situation was firmly in their favor, the assassins finally ran out of cannons to fire. Their fallen comrade had only managed to reload fifteen guns before he bit the dust, and Jon was using the last one. They resorted to reloading one of the unfired light cannons, hoping to Ravena that no one would come down here and shoot at them while they did.
Unfortunately, someone did come down here to shoot at them while they did. As one assassin sponged the bore and another rolled up a cask of flare-sand, a brief volley of bullets exploded around them, sending splinters every which way. They scrambled for cover — scrambled for their guns — and shot back in reply.
As bullets landed around them, Jon had the capstan in his sights. He silently thanked the assassins staving off the mercenaries further down the ship. For a moment, he wondered what Jiraya’s status was, but there hadn’t been any mercenaries coming down on this side of the ship for a while, so he must’ve been alright.
All he had to do now was focus. The fuze wire leading into the cannon took about a second to fire from the moment he coursed mana through it. That was a hefty amount of lead time, but it was just another variable to him. The ship rocked imperceptibly, as large as it was, but looking through the pin sights, the capstan he was gunning for was moving millimeters up and down, taking three seconds to move from the highs to the lows, then three seconds again from the lows to the highs.
It was when his point of aim was at the lowest that he tensed up. It was when it started to move upwards that he coursed mana through the fuze wire.
The blast thumped at his chest and thoroughly obscured his vision. It was all just smoke and fire; there was no way for him to know whether he’d hit the target —
There was a resounding strike of a gong. It rang as beautifully as scrap metal, and it was louder than all the gunfire and shouting combined.
There was more shouting thereafter as sailors and mercenaries panicked; the Hermitage slowly drifted away from the wharf, carrying with it much of their remaining equipment and war materiel.
Blasts continued to rock the mercenaries’ camp. The mercenaries on the pier had all been killed, either burned or torn to bits just by standing under the grapefire volley against the Hermitage, whose handful of remaining crew labored to drop even just one anchor to keep their precious ship from drifting away and haunting the Middling Sea.
The sounds of fighting continued above deck, however. Jon rushed there, thinking that it would be a quick cleanup — unsuspecting of the grave discovery that awaited him.
***
Name: Jon Fuze
Level: 8 → 9
Kills: 143 → 223
Kills to Next Level: 3 / 40 → 43 / 45
Skill Proofs: 5 → 6
| Skill Claims |
> Hastened Sight (Unlocks Lvl. 10)
> Aerial Lockbox (Unlocks Lvl. 15)
> Force (Unlocks Lvl. 10)
| Skills |
> Summon Scribetool (Tier 1)
> Perfect Motion (Tier 1)
***